June 11, 2002

Because
Ariel Sharon's latest, more moderate incarnation has been so warmly received by
the Bush administration, the US media, and the American public, it is crucial
to understand both the context of his transformation and the actual behavior of
the Israeli government toward the Palestinian people. The general context is
that the primary goal of the present government is the destruction of the
Palestinian Authority and the dismantling of the Oslo Accords. This can only be
defined as the politicide of the Palestinian people, a gradual but systematic
attempt to cause their annihilation as an independent political and social
entity.

For this
reason, Ariel Sharon has skillfully used the brutal and indiscriminant forms of
Palestinian resistance - especially the suicide bombers- to create a chain of mutually escalating
responses in order to induce both the Israeli and international community to accept
his goal. Using the fight against terrorism as a pretext, he aims to divide the
Gaza Strip and West Bank into tiny enclaves rules by local strongmen while
claiming he is supporting the "reformation" and
"democratization" of the Palestinian authority.

The final aim
is to continue the Jewish colonization of the so-called"Greater Land of Israel" until
Israel's exclusive and non-reversible control of the territories has been
attained. Some analysts suspect or hope that one outcome of this project is to
make daily life so miserable for Palestinians that large numbers will emigrate
from the territories' something that has, in fact, occurred during the last few
years.

Sharon learned from the
Lebanon fiasco that, while such policies must be implemented militarily, they
must cause minimal casualties. Otherwise, both international agencies and
public opinion could turn against them. To minimize Jewish casualties, it is
necessary to deploy large, heavily armed forces and to use cruel techniques
like razing whole neighborhoods. Resistance is met with heavy fire power, as
was the case in Jenin.

The immediate
aim of "Operation Defensive Shield" was to disarm "bases of
terrorism" by capturing weapons and explosives and to
"liquidate" or capture those involved in Palestinian armed
resistance. In other words, the goal was to dismantle any Palestinian security
forces, not only to hamper their ability to fight Israel, but to dissolve the
internal authority of Arafat's regime as well. For the same reason, Israel
security forces also assaulted most of the national and public infrastructure
and institutions and even destroyed databases like the one used by the
Palestinian Bureau of Statistic.

Additional
goals of the incursions, sieges, and extra-judicial executions were to
demonstrate Israeli military might and its willingness to use it and to prove
to the Palestinians that there were defenseless against any wanton action. The
Arab states barely paid lip service to the Palestinian cause, denouncing
Israeli actions just enough to avoid internal unrest, apparently because they
feared Israel was looking for a regional war. Such a war could distract the
Israeli public from the severe economic and social crisis within Israel ( such
as a high unemployment rate and the beginnings of hyperinflation) and serve as
a cover for uprooting large numbers of Palestinians from the land, as happened
during the 1948 war.

However, the
international community, including the United States, will soon recognize that
in an era during which every nation (including the Jewish and Palestinian
nations) has the right to self-determination, politicide is a crime against
humanity that is very close in its severity to genocide.

Baruch Kimmerling is a professor of
sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among his recent books are The
Invention and Decline of Israelieness (University of California Press)
and with Joel S. Migdal Palestinians: The Making of a People (The
Free Press and Harvard University Press).